It really gives the feeling of JA2 maps remade with some quality graphics. My honest worry is the underlying features of the engine, the bread and butter of the combat in JA2. A pretty screenshot is just a pretty screenshot.

Modding is super important, however the amount of actions you can do in game is amazing, no other game has this flexibility.

I had to list the player activities once to a Bitcomposer guy and after typing for ten minutes I realized that all the things you and your soldier can do in the game is absolutely unique compared to any other game.

It really gives the feeling of JA2 maps remade with some quality graphics.

It depends. This line
- Every mercenary has a detailed set of likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses
could mean new features. I mean in JA2 there isn't that: only mercs that dislike each other.

New features + moddability > JA 1.13
But I agree that if it is just JA2 with better graphics well...why waste time to apply 1.13 here? The only result could to have more fan of JA, but same game and better graphics isn't an incentive.

Not normally a fan of 3-D but that looks pretty good (reminds me of the Myth Mod set in Vietnam... casualty...). Does it have map editor? & yes moddability? Not that interested in if 1.13 stuff is in there or not, so long as you have the choice to turn it on and off in a similar way. I'd also like it to be a fully finished product... not something that needs constant online updates and regular patches. If you can fix the camera to stay on Isometric I'm sold.

I had asked bitComposer some weeks ago about the source code of ja2:r. Specifically, I wanted to know if it would be released in some form. You know, since ja2:r is just "ja2" with a little "r", so modding (and not the story) would probably be the key component to the game (at least from our point of view). And having the source code would be the best thing that could happen to us. The reply i got, was that they could not release the code, because of some middleware obligations (that wasn't that hard to guess). I talked about various forms of a source code release (full release, partial release, heavily scripted), but haven't got further notice on that. So, while we won't get the best parts, we might still get something substantial (or maybe nothing, who knows). They also said the want to concentrate on releasing the game and that we probably won't get any modding tools at first. I strongly implied that they should not neglect the modding capabilities in the early states of the development, since i will be so much harder to add them later on. Again, no further notice on that topic. There are still possibilities to get a moddable game. If we get documented file formats instead of the immidiate modding tools, we might be able to "re-create" them. I guess we will have to wait and see, until they decide to release some more info. I know some of you guys were in contact with them too, so whatever i told might have been public knowledge already.

However, they told me they would want to include some of the 1.13 features into ja2:r. I think it would probably be a good idea to have an open/public list with the 1.13 features (or any other mod too), so that we can have some kind of a poll to determine what the favourite features are that should also be available in ja2:r. Din't really had the time to create such a poll myself, so we can either use this thread to do this of someone start a new thread.

A poll? Is it a democracy then? Such and such "feature" imposed just because enough of you think it's a great idea. If it's moddable then you can be free to turn it into bloatware if you wish but please don't impose that on the rest of us from the offset! Oh alright have a damn vote. I like the weather, the smarter AI, the moddability and options on/off choices. I don't like somebody deciding to use a sound format I can't edit, far too many guns (so many types none of them have any value, not one), too many ammo types (I'm just not interested in that kind of gun nut nerdery); and any change that is imposed without the option to turn it off. It's just plain rude unless you are making a stand alone mod. How do you put that in votable terms is your problem.

it would be great to have buildings with more than just 2 levels (ground floor and first floor)! it would be even greater to have basements included in the same map or at least trenches! wounds tracking.....and everyrhing from 1.13 and modable too.

Here is GarfunkeL's post from the other board. I hope the repost is cool with the rules of this board, if not please delete my post.

It does feel a little like the game designers based their decisions on a couple of quick run throughs of the play testers. It feels to me that there are a few indicators that the play testers haven't spent much on in depth game play to allow for the conclusions we see in the press release, or do you guys feel otherwise?

I am curious if and how night combat will be implemented. Will the map just be dark and you still can see every enemy on the map? If yes, then what will night vision gear do, give a bonus to hit?

If I can see every enemy on the map, then all I need is line of sight and a couple of sniper rifles to clear the map. My favorite maps will be empty plains, I just position my guys in a corner and shoot until everyone is dead. Will there be sniper rifles in the game?

I also wonder if the buildings will be destructible? If yes, then can I shoot an anti material rifle through two walls of a building and kill an enemy on the other side? Will there be anti material rifles in the game?

I think I am the first to win this game - and it hasn't even been released yet! :giggle:

"GarfunkeL Email"

Dear Bit-Composer,

Having bought Jagged Alliance, Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games and Jagged Alliance 2 and having played all of them to death, I was delighted to hear that you guys got the licence and are going to make a new game in the series. I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of remake, though - as JA2 works perfectly well with modern computers and is pretty much near perfection. Still, it could have been a great opportunity to bring newer gamers into the heavenly goodness of tactical wargaming that the name Jagged Alliance has always represented.

Imagine my surprise then when I recently learned, thanks to your press release, that you people have decided to make a completely different type of game but still call it Jagged Alliance. I mean, if I make a chocolate cake, I don't use strawberries in it - no matter what some retarded "marketing analyst" suit tries to tell me. The combat engine of JA2 was damn near perfect and your given reasons are all invalid:
"It is dynamic, as it allows combat in real time"
-No, real time isn't inherently any more dynamic than turn based. Next I guess you want to call it visceral?
" It introduces timing as a new element: it enables the player to spot and assess enemy movements, so he can either cleverly sneak past, or lie in wait and choose the right moment to attack"
-Which already was an element of the old game but you actually had to plan for it before hand.
"It avoids the situation where you get mixed up in a battle while your mercenaries are some distance from the front. JA2 was very time-consuming in this respect, because players had to lag behind for several turns while they moved all their mercenaries to the front"
-Not true, as the game would switch to real time if you weren't in the vicinity of enemies. The above mention situation would only happen if you had one mercenary on one side of the map and the rest on the other side, which was a very, very rare situation.
"Combat with large numbers of enemies happen more quickly; in JA2 it took ages for the round to finish when numerous mercenaries and enemies were involved in the battle"
-No it didn't, unless you really had huge numbers - town defence missions with lots of militia and civilians. You only need to speed animations for that problem to go away - or go the Temple of Elemental Evil-route and have enemies do their movement animations simultaneously. Best of all, do it as the 1.13 mod-developers did - make animation speeds visible to the player, who can then tweak to the his/her liking. Original X-Com: Ufo Defence did that almost 15 years ago - but you people think that the only answer is to go real-time?
"The new system also allows us to incorporate new AI functions such as cutting off and flanking enemies, that only work when actions are carried out simultaneously and not one after the other"
-This was already in the vanilla game and 1.13 made it much better and the last part is an outright lie.

You, as a company, at least should have the moral courage to tell the old fans that you are making some kind of abomination for the console kiddies, instead of a Jagged Alliance game. And when the game eventually tanks, as the old fans surely won't buy it and no matter what you do, it IS a niche game - not to mention all the bad press and word-of-mouth this will get, what will you do then? Excuse bad design with piracy? Or maybe you'll think it wasn't "streamlined" enough? Or maybe, just maybe, you guys could take a collective look in the mirror and remember when it all went wrong.

hey, have any of these "dev" s....d f...s ever played tabletop warhammer? because this game si almost 25 years old now and the comunity is still growing! and there is no realtime involved in it - just pure imagination which by the way is far more important than any 3d graphics engine.

Messages:245
Registered:October 2008 Location: Land of Skanks and Cottag...

Is that the best they can do? 11 years waiting and all they can muster to come up with is a f*cking remake in real time calling it an improvement?

Why not create an entire new conflict and place? Isn't there enough conflict in the world to base on?
They are probably amateurs, that's why they don't even want to touch the TB system, because it's too damn hard (think jagged edge). Not only can it be far more complicated, but most were seriously bugged in one way or another. The easy way out of course is to go real time while pretending to make it more enjoyable yet more challenging because things happen simultaniously. The answer would be to hire some people with brains and design each aspect carefully.

They must think since fallout was such a commercial success they should do the same... WRONG! BitComposer is no Bethesda who has fans who will buy anything they make. Lets not even get into the budget or talent.

It's funny how they think that taking a niche game with many faithful fans and taking one of the main core elements away is a good idea.

Sure, I wouldn't mind throwing away 20-25 EUR as well, if it wasn't for the notorious fact that the niche games are already in the coffin. And they are kept being burried day after day. Let's take a few examples, shall we?

Example #1:
Fallout once used to be an excellent turned-based, top-down isometric non-linear RPG game based on the good ol' tabletop games (hence the game perspective). The greedy publisher [Interplay] goes down, but before that happened, they [Interplay] decide to disband their most successful RPG studio up to date [BIS], who brought them some really great games (and some average ones, too), like Fallout 1/2, Planescape: Torment, Baldurs Gate 1/2 - just to name a few of those - and to turn to developing crappy games for consoles (such as ill-fated Falout: Brotherhood of Steel). After several years of agony Zenimax/Bethesda buys the rights for making a sequel and serves us a... RPS [Role Playing Shooter]? To make things worse, it looks like an Oblivion-mod with guns???

They just didn't understand what made Fallout (and other BIS RPGs) that good. It wasn't any 'immersion' crap they keep talking about, it sure as hell is not the fancy graphics (although those games were pretty nice graphic-wise for their time), it weren't violent death scenes -- it was the market niche the games found their place in. If players like... no wait, if players WANT a cRPG based on a tabletop game/system/rules, why don't anyone provides them with that?

In the meantime, Fallout 3 was such a commercial success (which is a combination of several funny factors, indeed) that it got completelly new fanbase, the one that doesn't care much about the Fallout origins, nor about the gameplay and mechanics. Tabletop-games and Fallout? Sure as fuck not any more! Each new Fallout installment can now be sold well, because of this new fanbase, not to mention the latest of the Fallout games (New Vegas) which leaves Fallout 3 several parsecs behind in terms of the story, characters, setting and the common sense. Too bad its gameplay mechanics are based on the previous game, thus not delivering a tabletop-like cRPG, which could glitter in its uniqueness.

[ Unique games 0 : Casual games 1 ]

Example #2:
JA, who happens to be the peak of tactical turned-based gaming since... Well, ever. Releasing the source code was the best thing that could happen, and I guess JA-rs are one happy bunch of people due to that. After all, it led to the birth of v1.13, which introduced further features and balanced the game to an extent, making it moddable and, eventually, putting it in the hall of fame of the greatest PC games. And all that due to one core element: tactical turn-based combat (mixed with strategic map, merc/money management and basic RPG parameters, I agree - but the tactical TB combat is the main feature that prevails in the game).

It turns out the community will get another fast-paced, RTwP bang-banger which will be forgotten a week after its release. Most probably it will sink in the sea of other average titles due to the failure to use/implement its unique feature(s) on the market already saturated by games with RTwP bullshit, no matter in which form or variation they come (Fallout 3 VATS included). Another one unique game bites the dust, due to being streamlined to the level of today's casualty-gaming lowest-level of acceptance, in order to sell it better.

It seems to me that the people who pull strings in Bit Composer have simply chosen the right development-marketing-selling strategy for their product, which is (in short): cheap development (who needs high quality AI and a complicated turn-based gameplay?), rapid deployment (coming 2011, it's really short time considering how long we were waiting for anything with the label JA on it) and last, but not least, appeal to the casual-gamer population, which should strike for their wallets (due to the name, marketing, simplified gameplay, modernised graphics, you name it!) and boost the selling quota to at least 5-digit amount of copies, which would count for a solid profit on a zombie-IP with Phoenix-potential.

In the end, a part of the faithful community will accept the fact that "it was the time to move on and break up with the archaic gameplay mechanics", partly because the BC marketing will keep bombarding us with their nonsense and straightout lies; the other part will be let down for a JA game who is, actually, not JA.

[ Unique games 0 : 2 Casual games ]

Why, oh why all of my favourite games must finish on barbecue and be served in McMickeys? I ordered a salad, goddammit!

Example #3:
Now, let me pull an ace outta my sleeve - Blizzard. Do you think the guys in Blizzard thought for a single f*cking moment to put Diablo 3 in a first-person perspective, add long dialogue trees with different outcomes and 46 different endings? Do you think they had just one sentence during their concept research in which the terms like 'Starcraft', 'A New Race' and 'XBox controller' were put together? Frit, no! They make consistent games, games that do something specific (more-less unique) and they do it good.

What I meant, not good 'because they are high quality block-busters', although many of them are - they are simply good because they [the games] represent themselves, the mechanics, setting, gameplay and every other goddamn feature they originated on. Diablo is a hack&slash to the bones, with predefined classes, to which fixed skill trees have been attached, with a single ending a short dialogs and cutscenes 'for the flavour'. The game doesn't pretend to be Witcher, but Fallout 3 pretends to be TES/Oblivion. Gimme a fucking break, will ya? There are improvements in Blizzard's games, there are upgrades, there is new stuff, but it is a consistent work, one this company can so much be proud of. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Blizzard is so friggin' awesome, I'm not their fanboy; it's just they know their job and it seems the others suck at it so much, that Blizzard look like a fucking genius in comparison. Yet, Blizzard earns as well as others, maybe even better.

Now that I've got 4 aces on the table, allow me to pull another one outta my other sleeve - Creative Assembly. With 5 aces down there, you may accuse me of cheating, but this round, as well as this game, will be over soon.

I'll never sit for the BC table, since their game is just another blowing in the wind for me. May they have a nice time with their latest toy. Veni, vidi, forget it.

An example I would add to the ones above is the fall of the once great X-Com series as an example of what not to do with unique product line with a large cult following. As other have mentioned the Civ franchise has gone from strength to strength both in terms of remaining unique and be being a sales powerhouse. Yet it seems that since Fallout was gutted and transformed into just another mindless shooter the lesson learned by the industry is that eye candy and gore is all you need to make a bundle off what was once a cult series.

I've been playing and getting immense enjoyment from Wildfire 1.13 and what I've found is a game that outside of a few minor bugs gives a far more immerse gaming experience and stimulates my mind more then anything released in recent years and honestly I just don't see anything coming along in the next year or two that can compare. While i'd love to see JA2 vanilla return with better (but still top down isometric) graphics provided it'd be highly modifiable it's obvious that won't happen.

From what i've read JA2 Reloaded will be a smart pause system which means that that it will lack everything that made combat in JA2 unique and worthwhile. It's also obvious that modding is something that BC couldn't care less about which means that JA2 Reloaded will not have anything close to the flexibility of JA2. Given that BC is small, under funded outfit with a totally lack luster record I can't see any reason to think that JA2 reloaded will be anything but a mediocre squad level shooter that will have decent, if unexceptional, sales and be utterly forgotten in a year or so. Honestly, that assessment may be wildly optimistic given that BC has displayed utter contempt for the JA fan base and plans on releasing JA2 Reloaded in early 2011. Given the short development cycle and everything else that has transpired I doubt that much of of the RPG elements, side quests and massive non-linearity of JA2 will survive BC's "modernization".

I've never played a "smart pause" game that truck me as exceptional in any respect and i've no reason to think that BC has the ability to succeed in such a mediocre genre while countless, large and better funded companies have failed.

The upshot of all of this is that I'll find better things to spend my money on then JA2 Reloaded.

The new Stable Modding Platform is looking for coders. Birdflu wrote a ton of code but there is much, much more work to do and he needs help. Anyone with C/C++ hands on knowledge and spare time has an excellent opportunity to make a serious contribution! PM me on the Pit if you are interested.

But for Fallout 3, it's not about the isometric thing, as you stated. Even if the Fallout 3 would have been from isometric view, with possibility to jump into FPS view, people would still insist it's not a fallout. Because of other things, not because of the graphics for 2000.

What I would like to see happen for Jagged Alliance series is, kind of "realtime meets turnbased meets pausable" game mechanics as Dragon Age Origins. Add the possibility to play from isometric view, or abode the shoulder / FPS view like in Dragon Age.

That would bring the franchise to 2010 and it would still enable the great playability... assuming the game is well made otherwise(like DAO). This I would assume would fit the needs of new fan base along the oldies who still play JA2. And because graphics is not the issue that would alienate the oldies, if the game mechanics and personality would be there, I bet it would fly.

The biggest problem in the end is not the view of battlefield or is realtime or pausable etc. It will be the personality of the game, read: Mercs. I've had a feeling that all the latest attempts to bring JA back, has been concentrating of poorly implementing the tactical part of the game. And when that's not well done, the mercs are done even worse.

The biggest problem in the end is not the view of battlefield or is realtime or pausable etc. It will be the personality of the game, read: Mercs. I've had a feeling that all the latest attempts to bring JA back, has been concentrating of poorly implementing the tactical part of the game. And when that's not well done, the mercs are done even worse.

If they can directly recycle content from JA2 -voice acting, for example- that could help both the game's feel, and the dev's budget.

Messages:335
Registered:November 2001 Location: on route to San Hermanos

dont know if that would be possible copyright-wise although i would like to see my favorite mercs coming back with their old voice. re-recording voices may not be feasible since more than ten years have past and all the voice actors ahve old people voices now